All right, brethren, let's go
to 1 Thessalonians chapter 3. We'll go to our Lord in prayer
before we begin. Our Father and our Lord, We pray you would hallow your
name today in the hearts of your people. Make us behold your grace, your love, and your ability to work the things that
we see in your word. We ask You, Lord, bless it to
our heart. For Christ's sake, in His name, Amen. 1 Thessalonians 3, verse 11. Paul said, Now God Himself, now
God Himself and our Father, God and our Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ direct our way unto You. And Lord, make you to increase
and abound in love one toward another and toward all, even
as we toward you. To the end, he may establish
your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father,
at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. It's important for us to understand
that God alone makes His child holy. God alone makes His child
holy. In our experience of it, it begins
when God creates a new heart in His child in the new birth.
That's entirely the work of our Lord. And when He does that,
were born of incorruptible seed. Think of that, incorruptible
seed by the Word of God which lives and abides forever. And
so Peter said that hidden man of the heart, this new heart,
this new spirit, this new man he creates is uncorruptible. He's holy. He's uncorruptible. And when that takes place, that's
when God makes Christ to be unto us our righteousness and our
holiness. That's when he makes us to see
and know Christ is our righteousness. By his obedience, from his holy
heart, he perfected us forever and we're complete in him. This
is what he makes his child to know. And so we begin to worship
God in spirit, in that new heart, in that new spirit. And we begin
to rejoice in Christ Jesus. He's all our rejoicing, all our
hope. And then we have no confidence
in our flesh. We have no confidence in our
flesh. But our old man is a lot older than our new man and a
lot stronger than our new man. And we began thinking strength
and ability or that we have it and we don't
have it. And it's not in any way in which
we originally first think we have it. And what God does over
time is he is establishing our heart. It's a heart work. He's
establishing our heart. And he's establishing our heart
upon Christ. Upon Christ. to know more of
him, to know more of what we have in him, know more of what
he's doing at all times for his people. And so Paul's prayer
is for God to establish, and it is the Lord who establishes
our heart unblameable in holiness. First of all, God alone works
all spiritual good for his people and in his people. It's God alone
who does it. Paul depended upon God to direct
his way to them. He said there in verse 11, now
God himself and our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ direct
our way unto you. God the Father and his Son are
one. And Paul was dependent. It was God, our Father, and the
Lord Jesus Christ who directed Paul away from Thessalonica after
he gave these brethren faith. And it was five years before
God directed Paul's path back there. And even in that, the Lord was
teaching Paul, establishing his heart, increasing him to know
that his people stand by the Lord Himself, by our Master.
Paul depended upon God to give the increase in his brethren.
He said in verse 12, and the Lord make you to increase and
abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we
toward you. Paul was used of God to preach,
but he knew that he couldn't make that word effectual. He
could not increase his brethren. He prayed to God to give the
increase. Only God can give the increase.
And Paul depended upon God to establish their hearts. He said,
verse 13, to the end, he may establish your hearts unblameable
in holiness before God. Even our father at the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. To the end, he
may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God. So first
of all, this is an absolute dependence upon the Lord because the Lord
alone does it. And then secondly, each one our
Lord Jesus has made holy, each one he has created this new man
within, he increases. He increases. He grows us in love. He said,
verse 12, and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love
one toward another and toward all, even as we do toward you. This increase in love is by the
Lord increasing us in the knowledge of Christ, making us to know more of the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, more of his love toward us. That's
how He increases love in us for Him, and in doing so, because
our brethren are one with Him, He increases love for those begotten
of Him. But He also increases love toward
all men. He makes us to want to see His
people called out who are yet dead in sin. Now, I'm going to
come back to this second point, but I want to get on right here
to this third point. because he increases love in
us to this end, to this end. He said, verse 13, to the end,
he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before
God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
with all his saints. Now this new man, this new heart,
when he's created it in you, is holy, is holy. Everything God creates is holy. It's good. And it's holy. It's holy. Uncorruptible by incorruptible
seed. But he's going to grow us in
the new man. He's going to grow us. He's going
to grow us. And he's going to grow us in
love. And he's going to do it in order to establish our hearts
unblameable in holiness before God. How does he do this? He's going to make us more persuaded.
He's going to make us more persuaded that our unblameableness is Christ only. so that you're separated from
trusting all else in your heart. You trust from all other means
but the gospel in your heart, so that you commit all to Him. All to Him. And you know this is so of your
brethren as well, that their unblameableness is in Christ. and that He's the one that's
going to do this heart work in them like He's doing it in you.
It's going to be by the Spirit of the Lord. It's going to be
the Lord establishing our heart upon Christ the Rock. Look at verse 13 there. He says
that your heart would be unblameable in holiness before God our Father. before God who looks on the heart,
before God who sees all and knows everything. Do we want to attempt to be found
unblameable in holiness by what we've done? How have you done
it that so far? Would we be brazen to stand before
God and say we're unblameable by something we did? I hope not. God's saints are made holy by
Christ. This is his glory. And we're gonna be unblamable
before God in Christ and by Christ who is our righteousness and
our sanctification. All our righteousness and all
our sanctification. This work has to be, we have
to be established in the heart. to know this, to commit it all
to Him. The Lord Jesus is not going to
establish our hearts with legal fear. He's not threatening and that's
not how He's going to establish us. We can't live unto Him in
bondage. We can't live under him while
we're thinking we have to do this work ourselves or that we
have some part of it. You won't live under him. The
rich young ruler was not living to the Lord, he was living to
himself. We have to be freed from that and know we're accepted,
we're holy, we're righteous in him to be able to have our heart
completely trust him. Perfect love casts out fear.
That's how false religionists try to frighten sinners to make
professions by frightening them or coercing them to do something. But that's not how the bishop
of our souls establishes our heart. He's not giving us the spirit
of bondage again to fear. We had that already. He's given
you the spirit of His Son. He's given you the spirit of
adoption. He's made you know you're His child. And you feel
so comfortable coming to Him to cry, Abba Father. When the
Spirit creates a new holy heart within, the old man and our sin nature is
still with us. He's not done a thing to that. You're not using it, except in
this regard, that we're going to have a long, constant warfare
between the flesh and the spirit until the end. But God did that
on purpose. We're like oysters. You know how the pearl is created
in some oysters? It's by this aggravation and
this agitation from a grit of sand. That's what causes it.
And we are going to be established unblameable in holiness by our
Savior as He keeps us and makes us know He alone kept us while
we have this aggravating thing called sin plaguing us every
day. Experiencing Christ's unwavering
faithfulness to us. Experiencing Christ's unwavering
love to us. Experiencing His unwavering grace
to us. He's going to persuade us more
and more in our heart that we are established in Him. You see,
we are established in Him. We're complete in Him. But He's
establishing our heart to know this is so. so that we're persuaded and we
commit all to Him. We commit one another to Him. The Lord said through the Hebrew
writer, be not carried about with different and strange doctrines,
for it's a good thing that the heart be established and that
it be established with grace. not with meats which have not
profited them that have been occupied therein." Our Savior
ministers grace to us. That's how our hearts can be
established. It's our Lord ministering grace to us, ministering love
to us, showing us His love for us and keeping us. And that's
how He's going to increase you in the knowledge that He's keeping
you, that you're His. That's how He's going to increase
you in the knowledge of His grace and how free and unwavering and
unchanging it is to you. That's how He's going to make
you know He alone is the one in whom you are holy and righteous. It's a work that He does in us
to make us holy in this new man, but it's not to make us to look
to ourselves, it's to make us to look to Him for all things. We're holy by our representative
head, by his one offering. He was righteous, fulfilled all
righteousness for us, and he did it from a holy heart, and
he perfected his people forever. And he's establishing our hearts
in holiness by increasing us in the knowledge of him and his
grace and his love and what he has accomplished for his people.
He's making us know that we are holy and without blame before
the Father in him right now. That's what will establish your
heart. That's what will establish your heart and cause you to love
your brethren. Listen to Jude 24. Now unto him
that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless
before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. To the only
wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power
now and ever. God's saints are holy right now. holy in Christ at God's right
hand, and then by the sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth, He's made you holy in the new man by Him. But due to
this sin nature, we will, we're apt to fall. And the Lord will let you fall. This is all needful. We're apt to fall by the many
trials that he sends. We're apt to fall into sin. We're
apt to fall from exercising grace. We're apt to fall from steadfastness
in the doctrine of the gospel of Christ, looking to him only.
And if it weren't for him, we would fall away completely in
apostasy. But though he will permit you
to fall, he will not let you fall away. He is able to keep
you from falling. And he shall present his people
faultless. Adam was in a perfect world.
He was in a state of innocence, and he couldn't keep himself
from falling. The angels, a host of them, were
holy. in heaven, and they couldn't
keep themselves from falling. The ones who did not fall, the
only reason they didn't is by the one God who's able to keep
you from falling. You see, God's saints are holy
in the new man, but because we're imperfect and because of this
sin nature, we can't keep ourselves from falling. Well, John said
we keep ourselves. He keeps you. There's sometimes
that he makes you have the shield of faith and you're so strong
in faith that Satan can't even have, he can't even tempt you. There's other times you just fall. We can't make our heart unblameable
in holiness in God's sight. We couldn't do that. And we can't
establish our heart unblameable in holiness before God. And we
can't keep it. To imagine we can do so is from
our sin nature. It's the pride of our sin nature.
It's the spots of vain religion and idolatry that the Lord is
sanctifying us from by turning us to see Him and how
He is the one who keeps us from falling. We don't have the skill
and we don't have the power to do it. Satan could wipe us out
just that easily. were the spirit to withdraw his
presence from us, our sin nature would wipe us out. His saints, as faithful as he's
made his saints be in ages past, and the martyrs, his saints has
not kept his church. His saints have not kept the
gospel going forth in all the world for 2,000 years. That's
the work of our mediator, our prophet, priest, and king. He
is able and he has done it. See, the glory to establish our
hearts and to keep us from falling and to present us unblameable
to God our Father, that's the glory that belongs to our Savior.
He entered covenant with the Father to do that for his people.
That was His covenant promise to the Father. That's His office
as our mediator, as our prophet, our priest, and our king. Our
Lord is going to establish our hearts by making us commit it
all to Him and trust Him and know Him more that He's the one
that's going to present us faultless and unreprovable and unblameable
in the all-knowing sight of God. It's going to be Christ our righteousness
and Christ our holiness alone. Paul said he had been persuaded
of this through years of what he had gone through and the Lord
had established his heart and in the end he said, I'm suffering
these things nevertheless I'm not ashamed for I know whom I
have believed and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that
which I have committed unto him against that day. He's left us
in this body of death, in this world of sin, in this world of
tribulation, to show us it's not of us. To make us trust Him, to make
us committed to Him, to make us know He is our acceptance
with God and our perfection before God. And it's so right now, brethren. Go to Colossians 1 and look at
verse 21. is so right now, the Colossians
were being turned back and being told, you know, this is always
the thing, you know, through the ages the church has been
turned back to their flesh, turned back to their works, touch not,
taste not, handle not, and Paul was sent and he told them, I
showed you last time out, He has made us meet to partake of
the inheritance of the saints in light. He hath translated
us. He hath reconciled us. He hath
redeemed us. Look at what he went on to say
in verse 21, Colossians 121. And you that were sometime alienated
and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath he
reconciled. in the body of his flesh through
death to present you holy and unblameable and unapprovable
in his sight if you continue in the faith grounded and settled. You continue grounded in Christ,
settled in Christ, trust in him and be not moved away from the
hope of the gospel which you've heard, which was preached to
every creature which is under heaven whereof I, Paul, am made
a minister. Look at verse 27. to whom God will make known what
is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles,
and here it is, it's Christ in you, the hope of glory. He came
and worked this work in the earth amongst us, and by his body made
us righteous and holy, and then he comes and it's Christ being
formed in you personally that is the hope of glory. He's made
you unblameable. whom we preach, warning every
man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every
man perfect in Christ Jesus, in Christ. Whereto I also labor, striving
according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. He put
off the body of our sins by his death on the cross, and he was
formed in you, And that's the circumcision he talks about on
down the page. He circumcised you at the cross.
He circumcised you in your heart. So he's put off and he's made
us holy and he's that holiness that did it. And so we trust
his righteousness to make us righteous before the law. This
is Christ's work. He's the mighty God who came
down and created the new man and upholds us. by the word of
His covenant power. It's the Father's will that He
should keep each one the Father trusted to Him, and He shall
keep each one and not lose one. Christ promised to bring us to
the Father without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but to make
us holy, unblamable, and unreprovable before the all-seeing eye of
God. He purchased us with his blood
and we're his possession. So he's not going to lose one.
It's going to be in Christ. It's going to be by Christ. It's
going to be in his righteousness and his holiness that we're going
to stand unblameable. Why preach this? Because this
is the message combined with the things he works in Providence
to show you your weakness and that he's able. This is the message
he uses to establish our hearts. to trust that our unblameableness
is in Him. This is where He's going to increase
us in love, showing us more and more His everlasting love for
us. Making us clearly know it's Christ
only. It's Christ alone. And this is
the work of the Father, Son, and Spirit, because they're all
one in Him. So, He rules the trials. He's ruling them. He sent them.
He's ruling them. And He does it Not to keep us from falling in
the trial. If we fall, that's our fault.
We get all the credit for that. But through that, he's showing
you he's not gonna let you fall away. He's able to keep you from
falling away. He doesn't keep you from being
buffeted by Satan. That's not what he means by he
keeps you from the evil. Look at Joe, look at David, look
at Paul. That's not what he's talking
about. He's going to keep you from the evil of apostasy. He's going to keep you from the
evil of falling completely away from Christ and being separated
from the love of God in Christ. He does not keep us from committing
sin. He tells us not to. He commands
us not to. He commands us to flee from it.
Strive against it. And he gives you, when you can,
he gives you power to do it. That's the only reason you do
it. But when we sin, it's our own fault, but he will overrule
even that and restore you and keep you, showing you that he's
keeping you from falling away. Sin won't have dominion over
you because you're under his grace and he's going to give
you more grace and he's going to, by that, make you see he's
the only one in whom you're unblameable. That's how he's going to make
us abhor our own selves and our sins. and our self-righteousness. And that's how he's going to
make us cease from trusting ourselves. And that's how he's going to
make us know our need of him more and more. It's this continual
work of grace, and he's establishing us on Christ the Rock alone. He alone is able. And He brings
you to commit it all to Him, all to Him. He's helping us to be established
on Christ and all, not looking to any other means in this world,
no other gospel, no others. Committing it all to Christ's
hand, knowing He's able to present us unblameable. And He'll do
that, washed in His blood, justified by His righteousness, sanctified
by the Spirit. He's done it now by the death
and resurrection. That's what Paul said when he
said, even now, he said, you are at God's right hand. Your
life is in Christ at God's right hand. And He's coming again.
And when He shall appear, then you shall appear with Him in
glory. How faultless, unblameable, unreprovable in Him. See, we
sinned in Adam, but you're going to stand faultless. We became
corrupt in our nature, you're going to stand faultless. We
carried this sin around with us, and we're prone to backslide,
and we have many times, and you will again. And yet, you're going
to stand faultless before Him in Christ. Now here's the second point.
I'm going to be very brief right here, but I said all that to
say this. By showing us his love for us
continually through this and establishing our heart, he's
increasing you in love to establish your heart on him. Increasing
you in love for him to establish your heart on him. And he teaches
us as we go, he's teaching you to flee from sin, he's teaching
you how to be more diligent, he's teaching you how to possess
your vessel in this state of sanctification, in this state
of holiness that he's accomplished in you. He's going to keep you
from trusting that, you know, you're contributing or making
yourself, he's going to keep you trusting him. But as he does this and teaches
you not to sin, you have sinned and you will sin. You will. But what Christ will do, this is how it's going to increase
love for him and for your brethren. He will take one of your brethren
who he has established and increased in love. And he will cause them
to do what I've been talking about. He will cause them to
trust Christ and commit you to Christ and know Christ is able
because he's experienced it. They'll speak to you of the redemption
Christ has accomplished for his people. They'll just keep talking, they'll
just keep saying like Abraham said to Isaac, my son the Lord
will provide. He provided himself. He's accomplished
it. They're going to speak of this
work that he'll work in his child. They're going to keep speaking
the gospel by which he made you have life. The gospel by which
he's grown you since then. The gospel by which he keeps
teaching you and instructing you. They're going to keep speaking
that gospel to you. And they're going to exhort you
to go to Him. They're going to exhort you to
go to Him. And they're going to pray for
you. Not just say it, they're going to really pray for you.
And they're going to wait on God to work in you. And all the while they're going
to be kind to you and gracious to you and love you. They're
going to love you to Christ. They're going to bear your burden.
They're going to suffer along with you. And here's why they're going
to do that. Because that is what God has
done for them, for Christ's sake, and in Christ, over and over
and over again. And through this, through His
goodness and graciousness and kindness, The Lord will break
your heart. He'll humble you. And He'll make you know His mercy
and His grace and His love to you, it hasn't changed. And He'll
make you see that He's the one that kept you from falling away.
And He'll make you see that you're saved entirely in and
by Him. and all your unblameableness
is Him. And by that, He's going to increase
you in love for Him, and He'll increase you in love for your
brethren. That's the good works that brethren will do, so that when
God visits you in the day of visitation, when He comes and
works His grace in your heart, He'll make you glorify God for
their professed subjection to Christ because they didn't use
the means the world used. They didn't do what the world
does. They didn't use those spots.
They looked to Christ and trusted you to Christ and spoke Christ
to you. and they'll glorify God because
that's sanctification. That's unlike anything a natural
man, religious or otherwise, will do unless God has worked
in his heart. Don't think you won't fail and
that you won't preach the gospel, that you won't speak the gospel,
that you will use the law and you'll use the spots of the world. Don't think you won't do that.
But even then, God will have brethren who will bear with you,
be long-suffering to you, and do all these things, trusting
you to Christ and waiting on Christ to work in you. The Lord is faithful, who shall
establish you and keep you from evil. The only one. The only one. Look to Him. Amen. Father, we thank you. We pray,
Lord, that you would hallow your name in our hearts. Make us see
you alone work this. Increase love in our hearts,
Lord. Establish our hearts on Christ only. Make us abound in love one toward
another. Make us love each other to Christ.
Turn us from our sin and vain understanding. We need you to
work this, Lord. We need it constantly in each
of our hearts personally. Thank you, Lord, for the promise
to do this. Thank you that you have and that
you promise where you've begun the work, you'll finish it. We
ask it in Christ's name. Amen.